Emotional adjustment and peer relationships: The role of behavioural reputation and classroom social climate

Internalising and externalising difficulties are linked with poor peer relationships, but there are gaps in our understanding of the reputational and contextual factors that connect emotional adjustment, social behaviour, and social acceptance in the peer group. A sample of 1439 children aged 7-13 years from 60 classrooms provided self-report and peer-nomination data at two time points over one school year. Children completed a self-report measure of anger, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, alongside ratings of positive and negative peer experiences. They also provided responses to a sociometric survey, which generated scores of social preference as well as behavioural reputation for cooperative, disruptive, aggressive, shy, and leadership qualities. Anger predicted lower social preference via a less cooperative reputation and a more disruptive reputation. Results also showed that anger had a weak connection with greater social preference via a less shy reputation. Anxiety predicted lower social preference via a more shy reputation. Moreover, a more problematic classroom social climate, in terms of peer experiences, was found to attenuate the negative peer consequences of the disruptive reputation associated with anger. Results clarify the value of locating internalising and externalising difficulties in the peer context. They advance theoretical conceptions of the social consequences of emotional maladjustment, and indicate the relevance of classroom-level social factors in peer socialisation processes.